Here's the scenario. You're playing your favorite video game when you stumble across a badly needed item... that happens to be perched on the top of a platform, just out of your reach. Like a fox thirsting for a cluster of ripe, juicy grapes, you jump, and jump and jump again. Yet every desperate attempt to grab the ledge is foiled by gravity. What do you do?

The average person might storm off with his head held low, muttering something about preferring low-lying fruit. But not Radd Spencer, the star of Capcom's Bionic Commando -- he was custom-built for such situations. Instead of taking his eye off the prize, Radd would simply swing his bionic arm toward the platform in the distance, latch onto its underside, then pull himself up to a much-deserved reward. Radd's bionic arm was such a handy tool that dozens of other video game stars adapted it for their own use. Earthworm Jim has his buddy Snott, and Lara Croft has her grappling hook, but the underlying concept is exactly the same.

CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION

Character customization is the closest most of you couch spuds will ever get to being this extreme.

Nothing draws you into a videogame like designing your own character -- literally. You can give the onscreen hero your own hairstyle, your own facial features, your own skin tone, and even your own weight! Well, maybe you don't want him resembling you quite THAT closely.
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Back in the 1980's, character customization was strictly limited to turn-based RPGs on powerful home computers. They were the only machines at the time that could really do the concept justice... and even then, they left something to be desired. Still, Japanese games had Cocoron on Famicom to bring true customization to console games; it let them build a character from a toy box filled with spare parts. Head of a ninja, torso of a clown, and the wheel of a unicycle? The very definition of a hero.

Over time, the options offered by futuristic mech combat series Armored Core became far more common, especially in the sports genre. In wrestling sims like WWE Day of Reckoning and Fire Pro Wrestling, designing your own fighter is half the fun.

Firearms are more complicated than videogames often make them seem. Merely piercing a target with a bullet doesn't guarantee victory -- precision is of the utmost importance, because your aim can make the difference between a mere flesh wound and a fatal strike. And different kinds of guns work best at different ranges.

Early videogames rarely took these details into account, resulting in weapons that had the same lethal effect regardless of accuracy or proximity. Vic Tokai's Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode was one of the first games to change this. In addition to the game's side-scrolling action and first-person maze exploration were unique missions that required the player to pick off an enemy agent from thousands of feet away, using an unsteady sniper scope to line up his target. It was one shot, one kill... or else the mission ended in failure. After all, it wouldn't do to spoil Golgo's reputation for perfection, would it?

Precision aiming would go on to play an important part in Sega's House of the Dead series. As for sniper scopes, they become standard equipment for heroes like MDK's Kurt and Metal Gear's Solid Snake, as well as the soldiers in dozens of first-person shooters.

ENEMY POWER ACQUISITION

Believe it or not, this isn't the reason they call him 'Rockman' in Japan.

There's no better reward for finishing a level than getting your hands on the devastating weapon the boss at the end of the stage had used against you. Realizing this, Namco added an exciting new feature to Gaplus, the sequel to Galaga. Where before your ship could be captured by the swarm of space bugs flying overhead, Gaplus turned the tables: once you destroyed the insect queen, you were given a tractor beam which swept up her drones and turned them into powerful allies.

Capcom took the concept one step further in Mega Man, letting its squat blue hero collect weapons from defeated bosses and adapt them for his own use. Since then, this handy ability has popped up in everything from adorable platformers like Kirby's Adventure and Brave Fencer Musashi to intense side-scrolling shoot 'em ups such as Gaiares. And of course, the ability to claim enemy firearms as your own is still a defining characteristic in the Mega Man series, nearly 20 years later.

A broken hand turned out to be a lucky break for shooter fans. When developer Eugene Jarvis had his hand crushed in a car accident, he was forced to come up with a new control scheme for his next project, Robotron: 2084. The fire button that was so common in other games of the early 1980's was replaced with an extra joystick: pushing it let loose a stream of bullets in that direction. This not only let Jarvis playtest the game comfortably, but gave players a new level of control over the action, ensuring that they'd never be left helpless in their struggle to save humanity from thousands of genocidal robots.

Nearly a decade and a half later, this innovation would influence the design of the Playstation's popular Dual Shock controller. Although that second stick is generally used to control a camera rather than a cannon, there are still games in this modern age that use omni-directional firing. One of these titles, Geometry Wars Evolved, is among the most popular original titles on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade download service.